Intricacies of Joan Watson
by heiots
Summary: Collection of short stories on the life of Joan Watson. May include delving into her head from time to time.
1. Reminiscing Kites

**Reminiscing Kites**

_"They are the intangible elements that unravel memories  
buried deep beneath the everyday thoughts of life."**  
**_

Scattered leaves scrape against the ground before being swept up by the wind, spiralling in the evening's diminishing light. The scent of forgotten memories lingers in the autumn air, what's left of the day's warmth quickly fading. A tan squirrel scurries up the thick trunk of a red maple tree, bushy tail twitching in rapid motions before disappearing into the leafy canopy overhead.

The unspoken is expelled in a sigh that escapes the world's notice. She shifts on the park bench, causing the papery contents in the bag to rustle beneath her hands. An elderly couple strolling down the pavement gaze at her in curiosity, and they exchange the kind of smiles that strangers passing each other by in life do.

Five minutes. She'll give it another five minutes.

A little child's laughter rides on the wind. On the patch of green littered with fallen leaves, a girl clutches a spool of string, as a man, presumably her father, backs away with a kite of bright, brilliant colours. The child bounces in excitement, but he does not hurry with his task. She laughs in anticipation, and he grins, both oblivious to prying eyes.

He waits for the perfect moment, and when it arrives, he lets go.

The kite soars.

* * *

_Peals of giggles break loose. The nylon string is taut against her finger, the kite tugging, fighting to break free to wander its own way. She is not foreign to kite-flying. There is one at home that her brother lets her use on occasion if she promises to do his chores for him, but this, this one is different. This one is hers to keep. It is not the prettiest, not like the ones her classmates have. It is nothing more than a plastic bag, sticks stuck together with tape, and a paper tail at the end, but it is beautiful because he made it._

_For her._

_She twists around to look at him, to thank him, and the words dissipate in her mouth._

_Something feels wrong. Though why exactly, she can't pinpoint._

"_Do you have to go?"_

_He crouches down beside her. There is dirt smudged on his face. "I've got to work, remember?" His lips curve, but his voice sounds all funny. He stands, his hand resting heavy on her head for a second._

_Eyes follow his figure. He stops by the bench her mother occupies, and they talk for a long time. There is a lot of gesturing. Shaking of head. Slumped shoulders. She watches them, a knot in her chest, too far away to hear the words spoken. When they both turn to look in her direction, she tilts her head up to the darkening sky, only to realize that the kite is nowhere to be found. The string lies slack in her hands._

_A quick search reveals the kite lying abandoned on the ground, its journey ended before it had even barely begun._

"_Joan!"_

_She grabs the kite and races back. He is already gone. She wants to ask where he went and when he will visit again, but the sight of her mother's reddened eyes stop the questions from spilling forth. The ride home is quiet. In her room, she hunts for a suitable hiding place where Oren wouldn't be able to get to and finally stashes the kite inside her closet, behind piles of clothes, where it waits for the next opportunity to be out again in the open._

* * *

"Watson!" He calls as the door slams shut behind her.

She halts, laden with the weariness of one who has been lugging around boulders instead of a childhood toy constructed of mere plastic and sticks.

He takes a quick moment to survey her. "You've been to the park, I see. And you were?"

She meets his eyes, and after a second, gives him the faintest of smiles. "Waiting."

* * *

_A/n: Big thank you to amindamazed for being my beta reader for this chapter!_


	2. Sedimentary Deposits

**Sedimentary Deposits **

One thing Moriarty isn't wrong about, not that she would admit it to anyone. Once there was a craving that sought reassurance, a good word. It was the temporary antidote to the sickness known as self-doubt, a disease that had plagued her for as long as she remembers. It was a constant niggling voice that fed the discontentment in her life.

Sometimes it comes back to haunt her. Nobody is as harsh a critic as she is to herself. After years of collecting compliments, she learned to expect them. They nourished her self-esteem.

Then the accident happened, and in place of compliments and envious looks, there were piteous gazes and whispered remarks.

It always starts out innocent. Unintentional, like any addiction. No one ever expects to be entrenched as deeply as they eventually become. The more you feed those urges, the more they demand. Who would've guessed she would become a victim of such a common, vicious cycle?

Brilliant, collected Joan. No one suspected her suffering for a one reason: her talent at pretending. Skilled almost to a fault. It is the best way to fend off bullies: to pretend they don't affect you. She learned to sit still, feigning deafness to the taunts that mocked the distinctive slant of her eyes and mismatched set of parents.

There was a time, when on the way home from school, a familiar red beanie with white stripes caught her attention. She recognized it at first glance because she'd personally chosen the yarn and spent a whole month crocheting the beanie. Her heart leaped, his name on the verge of tumbling from her lips when a sudden deprecating comment shredded the intention. Homeless people are a waste of her parents' money, the classmate had remarked in disdain. The laughter that followed paralyzed her. Head spinning, she managed a weak grin, and before the man with the red beanie got the chance to look at the sorry excuse passing for his flesh and blood, before she got the chance to deny any connection with him, she conjured up a reason to leave and fled in the opposite direction.

She hadn't known relief and shame could exist in the same internal space. In that instance, she became painfully aware she was ashamed of her homeless, wandering father. It birthed forth another kind of shame altogether, and it became an immovable stone wedged in her heart.

She got together with the same classmates the next day, laughed with them, and carried on with the same old curriculum. The tears shed bitterly the night before was a non-existent nightmare that was best forgotten. She wouldn't admit that it bothered her, or that it bothered her that it bothered her, but it didn't matter because she was talented at building walls around things that mattered most.

That's how she's learned to live.


	3. Contusions

_A/n: This one comes from Sherlock's POV, so it's a little different. Many thanks to beta reader sanguinarysanguinity for an AMAZING job! ALSO, (s_eems I forgot to credit in that first chapter, so MY BAD!) a huge_ thank you to amindamazed for beta-ing "Reminiscing Kites." (Which she never asked for, but giving credit where credit is due here! These people are wonderful, talented writers.)_

* * *

**Contusions**

_Contusions, commonly known as bruises, result from broken blood vessels, which are often caused by blunt trauma. This form of hematoma doesn't go undetected, although damage is initially invisible to the naked eye. Underneath skin, blood from ruptured vessels seeps into the surrounding interstitial tissues, taking minutes to days for ugly discoloration to appear. _

A motor putters down the road just outside the Brownstone, disrupting the flow of thoughts coursing through Sherlock's mind. Fingers twitch at the disturbance, then, grow still with the disappearance of the intruding motor.

The whitish yellow hue of the moon filters through windows, casting a pale luminous glow in the otherwise darkened room. Eyes flit towards the couch. The figure under the blankets has not stirred, not since the hour hand struck one.

He abandons the hard-backed chair, ignoring the protesting twinge from stiff muscles, and crosses the hall. Swiping a set of car keys off the table, he yanks a black lightweight jacket from the rack and lets himself out into the night.

††

The lodging's shabby exterior, complete with graffiti spray-painted across slowly crumbling brick walls, makes for a poor first impression. Not that he had expected much from accommodations based in the slums of the city. Above the single doorway hangs the hotel's name in neon lights, of which four out of nine letters fail to glimmer. Chipped, concrete stairs lead up to the front door, path lit dimly by a flickering bulb perched at the right side of the entrance.

He walks in through the doorway, and his foot sinks into a dull, olive carpet with patches of a shade darker. Canned laughter from the twenty-inch television behind a low coffee-stained counter greets him.

Not a living soul in sight, not even a glimpse of a single security camera hidden in aged cobwebs.

A place made for easy crime.

He takes the steps two at a time to the next floor, a cursory glance at the expletives scribbled over peeling wallpaper. Lowered voices and a high-pitched raucous laugh seep through paper-thin walls, grating on his nerves. He ascends the last step, and on the second landing, spots the numbers, acrylic with a bronze finish, stuck on the fourth door.

Fourteen.

This was where she had been.

A bead of sweat trickles down his temple. His shallow breathing, amplified in the dark, narrow hallway, accompanies the low hum of the heater.

He ought to barge in. Plough through the empty bottles littering the floor and unleash his roiling fury on the miscreant within. Aren't there firm believers in the old saying 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'? He knows well enough she wouldn't do it. Why not take vengeance on her behalf? Hadn't he spent hours deliberating before coming to that decision? Is that not why his feet had pounded all the way here like a desperate man's?

Unnerved, he shoves his hands into pockets, conscious of the tremors that have crept in yet again. Unexpected. Untamable. One more factor beyond his control. They came in intervals of thirty minutes, with the first episode happening within seconds of her return to the Brownstone, the instant the details coalesced to present the full picture in all its sordid glory.

He inhales deep, fists clenched by his side, and in the stale, musty air, below the pungent odors of sweat and alcohol, a scent causes his breath to hitch.

He pulls up, heart hammering within his chest. A pellet of white-hot heat, lodged in the bottom of his spine, begins to ascend, vertebra by vertebra.

The scent is etched in his mind. Both enticing and repulsive, sharp like vinegar.

_Heroin._

And it smelt rather like…

_Home._

His mind careens wildly, memories rising to the surface: stumbling through the drenched streets of London, the freezing night air draped around him, body wracked with shivers and covered in cold sweat as he grapples for the packet in the hand of the man called Rhys.

A distant voice berates him for not having anticipated the current circumstances, but it is tiny, insignificant, and he quickly squelches it. He inches closer to the door as though drawn by a magnetic force. At the back of his dry throat, beyond the sour beginnings of nausea, is the taste of longing.

He could still accomplish what he came to do, couldn't he? Perhaps even make away with a trophy in the form of sweet, white powder.

Fingers quiver, the relentless cravings fanning from the depths of his gut outwards until he is certain they would consume him any second.

His weakness.

_Or is it not?_

††

He returns to the Brownstone in the wee hours of the morning, porch lights piercing through the first faint grey glimmers of twilight. Trudging across the threshold, chilled to the bone, he finds her awake, still nestled among blankets, hair disheveled in that way that has always been oddly attractive to him.

She fixes him with a questioning look. He supposes he looks a little worse for wear, but at least he hasn't appeared to her babbling incoherently like he did at Alistair's place. With a wan smile, he offers up his injuries for her perusal. "Minor accident with a brick wall."

The antiseptic stings where skin had broken, but he tolerates—no, welcomes—the pain without so much as a wince as deft hands gently but skillfully clean dust, dirt, and dried blood from wounded knuckles.

She reaches up into the cabinet for a packet of gauze, and the loose sleeve of her favourite red worn sweater slides back, bunching up at her elbow. Bruises like soft petals of purple and blue bloom on pale skin. She blinks, dropping her arm to cover what can't be unseen.

_Hemostasis_.

It is a process he is well acquainted with.

A vital procedure that stops the bleeding, it allows the repair of damaged vessels and tissue through three stages: vasoconstriction, platelet plug formation, and coagulation. If the body is unable to halt the bleeding on its own, outside assistance may be required to stimulate healing of the wound.

His own case is illustrative. It took another to guide him through the steps to recovery.

Perhaps she requires assistance; he only hopes she will allow it.


	4. 021815

**02/18/15**

Contrary to popular belief, lightning does strike the same place twice. I mentioned it to Mom yesterday. She must've regarded it as more than a passing remark because Gabrielle called this afternoon. Beneath the false casualness, I hear underlying currents of concern and worry. She invites me over to stay for a couple of days, to visit their church. I thank her, but politely decline before hanging up the phone.

I sit there and think that perhaps it might be a good idea. Perhaps attending one of those services might reveal ways of coping with grief that my expensive education and experience have not taught me. Perhaps those people are capable of raising the dead.

Certainly it would be more productive than gratuitously indulging in what was and what might have been.

It is a thought, and I consider calling her back, but I don't. It is a difficult task, asking for help from an unknown entity who supposedly performs miracles, yet doesn't. I pretend not to acknowledge the paralyzing bitterness that spreads like poison from the pit of my stomach.

I sit in stillness as dusk approaches, the deepening shade of orange filtering through the blinds, and wonder if God is laughing at my piteous attempts at life.


End file.
